What we’re loving at the moment…

What the Ladybird Heard on Holiday

How to Stop Time

Matt Haig
Published by Canongate

Tom Hazard may look like an ordinary 41 year old History teacher, but he has a dangerous secret. Owing to a rare genetic condition, he is old. Over 400 years old. From Shakespeare’s Globe theatre, to sailing the South Seas with Captain Cook and sipping cocktails with F Scott Fitzgerald, he has lived a long… Read More

The Lost Girl

Carol Drinkwater
Published by Michael Joseph Ltd

Last year we were very fortunate to host Carol Drinkwater, the charming former actress and author of a series of books about her olive farm in France when she was launching a debut novel, The Forgotten Summer, an atmospheric family drama set on a Provence vineyard estate. Now we have her keenly awaited second novel,… Read More

Ravilious & Co: The Pattern of Friendship

Andy Friend
Published by Thames & Hudson

In the 75 years since Eric Ravilious’s untimely death in the Second World War, he has become one of the most popular and important artists of the twentieth century. His association with Edward Bawden is well known, but his wider circle included artists, friends and lovers who influenced and supported each other in many different… Read More

The Dog, Ray

Linda Coggin
Published by Hot Key

A thoughtful, charming and moving children’s novel about friendship, grief, reincarnation and life as a dog. When 12 year old Daisy is involved in a fatal car crash, she wakes up in a heavenly waiting-room, where she is allocated a new life, and finds herself back on earth…in the body of a dog. After escaping… Read More

Detective Dog

Julia Donaldson
Published by Macmillan

We’re very excited about this one… Britain’s best-selling picture book author and local resident, the wonderful Julia Donaldson has chosen to collaborate with one of our favourite illustrators, Sara Ogilvie, to create a fantastic, fast-paced romp, The Detective Dog. ‘There once was a dog with a keen sense of smell. She was known far and… Read More

Our Endless Numbered Days

Claire Fuller
Published by Penguin

Winner of the 2015 Desmond Elliott Prize for Fiction this is a striking and absorbing first novel inspired by the true life story of Robin van Helsum, a Dutch boy who walked out of a German forest in 2011 claiming to have survived there with his father The novel opens with the young narrator Peggy,… Read More

Strange Star

Emma Carroll
Published by Faber

From the author of In Darkling Wood and The Girl Who Walked on Air comes an enjoyably creepy story inspired by the summer when Mary Shelley created Frankenstein. There is a growing body of young readers who are great fans of this writer, a former secondary school teacher who creates deftly plotted involving stories with… Read More

Squirrel Pie (and Other Stories)

Elizabeth Luard
Published by Bloomsbury

Another book to contain a squirrel recipe, surely a first for the Bookshop reviews! This is renowned food writer Elisabeth Luard’s collection of stories of food from around the world. From bush-tucker in Australia, to snails in Crete, squirrel pot-pie from the grey squirrel’s native habitat of the forests of North America, to Ethiopian injeera,… Read More

The Wild Life

John Lewis-Stempel
Published by Penguin

Following the purchase of a run-down Herefordshire farm, and encouraged by dreams of roast duck with wild mushroom sauce, as well as a combination of being utterly broke, with natural bounty around him, farmer John Lewis-Stempel, whose previous book Meadowland was a runaway success, decides to eat only wild food for a year. It must… Read More